Hello everyone,
I have just finished a review/research dossier on Blockchain technology adoption for the Healthcare industry. I am now putting it into a series of articles on my blog. I have already written the basics of the blockchain technology and the Part 1, acting as an introduction as it gives some context.
Briefly, regarding the context, the most crucial points are the data breaches, flawed data and frauds.
In 2015, it was estimated that 253 healthcare record data breaches, due to hacking/IT incidents, had a combined loss of over 112 million records (Moffit & Steffen 2017). In 2012, 1000 healthcare (HC) facilities in 48 US states have been warned by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), that they might have bought and administered a fake version of an anti-cancer drug, Avastin ® (bevacizumab) (Mackey et al. 2015). In 2016, it was estimated that over 80% of the clinical trial data submitted to the Chinese FDA contained fraudulent (fabricated or flawed) data (DeRuzza 2017).
Countless of such misdemeanors can be found in the Healthcare industry, ranging for example, from frauds, falsification, hacking, to exploitation of supply chain vulnerabilities. All of these induce a huge financial strain on the Healthcare industry. For example, the loss of profit due to counterfeit drug sales is estimated around tens of billions of dollars, $75 billion in (Blackstone et al. 2014). It is only recently that a technology, the Blockchain, has gained hype across the Healthcare industry, as a panacea for a broad range of misdemeanors.
For people interested, next articles will be composed of articles on the analysis, predictions and adoption of Blockchain for Administrative and Financial Procedures, for R&D, for Supply Chain and finally for Precision Medicine.
Please, let me know if you find missing/wrong things, or if you are interested in reading the whole series.
Thank you a lot!
References:
- Blackstone, E., Fuhr, J. & Pociask, S., 2014. The Health and Economic Effects of Counterfeit Drugs. American Health & Drug Benefits.
- DeRuzza, C., 2017. A Closer Look at Bioequivalence Trials in China and the Increased Need for Reliable CROs.
- Mackey, T.K. et al., 2015. After counterfeit Avastin®—what have we learned and what can be done? Nature Reviews Clinical Oncology, 12(5), p.302.
- Moffit, R. & Steffen, B., 2017. Health Care Data Breaches: A Changing Landscape.